Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro) (1979)
***/****
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Adapted from a Monkey Punch manga that was itself based on Maurice LeBlanc’s popular super-spy Lupin, Hayao Miyazaki’s first feature-length film The Castle of Cagliostro came about as an offshoot of his experiences producing television episodes of a popular Lupin series (1977-1981). As such, the animation and backgrounds are more simplistic, the story is more cartoonish (though the very basic Miyazaki hallmarks of a girl in transition, flight, and gadgetry are already in place) and one-dimensional, and the pace is more relentlessly breakneck than occasionally meditative. Beginning as a heist comedy and continuing as an impenetrable fortress/princess in a tower action adventure film, The Castle of Cagliostro is a light, irreverent slapstick exercise with a healthy share of nifty gadgets and derring-do. Missing is a sense of completion and the deeper examination of themes that one will come to associate with the director’s work, but The Castle of Cagliostro stands on its own merits; despite being shackled somewhat by the artistic and thematic requirements of an in-place franchise, the picture reveals the burgeoning promise of a filmmaker who would become the most important voice of the new anime medium. 100 minutes
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
***/****
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A dry-run in many ways for Miyazaki’s later works, particularly Princess Mononoke, which the picture resembles most, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is marred by a painfully-dated soundtrack and politics strained to the edge of hysterical, but it remains a powerful piece and a showcase for nearly every element of what would become recurring themes in Miyazaki’s work. See in conservationist and warrior (Princess Mononoke) Princess Nausicaä a young girl with an animal familiar and powers of flight (Kiki’s Delivery Service) at odds with a militaristic airborne oppressor (Porco Rosso) who makes a habit of kidnapping princesses (Laputa: Castle in the Sky), all the while maintaining an innocent flirtation with a heroic boy (a trope discernible in all of Miyazaki’s subsequent output). The leader of the industrialized state is a woman, and the conflict of the piece involves the struggle between civilization and the fury of the natural (Princess Mononoke again, with insects and poisonous spores in place of forest spirits and elder gods). Not immune at this point to his culture’s general obsession with nuclear war (the poisonous spores of the film’s ancient forest “wasteland” remind of the ashes of fallout), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is probably more interesting as a source material for the student of Miyazaki’s tendencies and nascent concerns than, perhaps, as an entertainment unto itself. The picture was unavailable for so long that many have come to it only after sampling the filmmaker’s late production; a perspective uncoloured by hindsight is a luxury reserved only for the lucky, prescient few. 118 minutes
Laputa: Castle in the Sky (Castle in the Sky) (1986)
***/****
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Often hailed as Miyazaki’s most accessible work, Laputa: Castle in the Sky is a somewhat one-note “boy’s adventure” with an unusually weak female protagonist and an overreliance on set-pieces. Inspired by a reference in Gulliver’s Travels to a floating city above Balnibarbi, the film is ultimately less Swift than Conan Doyle–an archaeological adventure that eventually involves itself in the exploration of a lost and dead civilization. It appears to be a straight cliffhanger serial, in other words (complete with a sly Victorianism), at least until its final third, when the picture begins to take on the cause of the filmmaker’s ecological concerns. Sheeta is an heir to the floating Kingdom Laputa. Earthbound for generations as the island drifts undiscovered in a storm cloud, Sheeta discovers her legacy with the help of a much-coveted heirloom: a blue “levistone” that points the way to her ancestral home. Joining forces with brave boy Pazu, Sheeta’s quest to reclaim her legacy leads the pair on a series of adventures, sometimes in the company of a bumbling crew of pirates, always just ahead of a greedy army seeking to loot the gilded Laputa. The first hint of Spirited Away‘s cautionary stance on the dangers of materialism (along with the first look at a character design echoed in Spirited Away‘s boiler-room keeper), Laputa: Castle in the Sky is interesting for the Miyazaki scholar for sure but still feeling its way in terms of the connectivity and brilliance of Miyazaki’s later plots. A superior children’s entertainment regardless, Miyazaki refines his dedication to younger viewers with his next film–abandoning his broad politicizing until 1992’s Porco Rosso. 125 minutes
THE DVD
Image B Sound C+ Extras C+ by Bill Chambers Castle in the Sky (a.k.a. Laputa: Castle in the Sky) arrives on DVD in a 2-disc set that’s available individually or in a three-pack with Spirited Away and Kiki’s Delivery Service. The 1.75:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is the weakest of the three Miyazakis out this week from Buena Vista, mostly because the source print was not scrubbed to digital perfection. There are numerous distracting pinholes throughout in addition to an on-again/off-again ghosting effect, though colours are bright and fabulous. (As with Spirited Away, the image is windowboxed, providing significant breathing room on the vertical sides for monitors that over-overscan.) Castle in the Sky‘s original Japanese soundtrack is presented in Dolby Surround, and it’s actually more robust than the lo-fi English Dolby Digital 5.1 alternative. Both tracks appear to be missing sound cues, as there are significant patches of near-dead air in the opening sequence, in particular.Pixar’s John Lasseter provides a video introduction in which he tells us that we’ve chosen an excellent Miyazaki film to watch in Castle in the Sky. Although I love Lasseter’s work (Toy Story 2 throbs with genius), these intros reek of cultural arrogance, an Anglo personality validating Asian art. Other extras on the first platter include a “Behind the Microphone” segment (5 mins.) featuring uninteresting interviews with the American vocal cast (Mandy Patinkin, James Van Der Beek, Mark Hamill, and Cloris Leachman), plus a 4-minute block of three Japanese trailers for Castle in the Sky. A “sneak peeks” section houses compressed-looking previews of Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Finding Nemo, Atlantis II: Milo’s Return, Stitch!, Bionicle: Mask of Light, The Lion King: Special Edition, and the latest games from Disney Interactive. The second disc contains a version of Castle in the Sky reminiscent of the “Work in Progress” Beauty and the Beast, as it’s the entire film in sequential storyboard form; a better keepsake than a viewing experience, it plays with the finished soundtrack in Japanese or English. Originally published: April 13, 2003.
My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
****/****
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The Cheshire Cat recast as a twelve-legged feline bus, the White Rabbit a blue acorn-stealing blob with a little white assistant, and the caterpillar and his mushroom fashioned into the grey, heavy-lidded demeanour (and drum belly) of wood spirit Totoro, Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro recasts Lewis Carroll as something at once more based in functionality and more useful to the developing psyche. An enchantment that suffers only for a mildly dated “blip” score, the film carries the evolving hallmarks of Miyazaki’s auteurist questions: little girls displaced by a move or a trauma; surrogate parents; magical modes of transportation; the freedom of flight; and the terror and the exhilaration of the possible. Note one magical scene that encompasses all as nuts planted by young Satsuke (voiced by Noriko Hidaka) and her toddler sister Mei (Chika Sakamoto) grow at the urging of a midnight dance while their father (Shigesato Itoi) toils in his study, oblivious. Too damn short at 86 minutes, My Neighbor Totoro is a wondrous picture by an artist hitting his prime as an animator and fable-maker–a dry run in many ways for the master’s late work (see the soot spirits resurrected in Spirited Away, the crone Granny (Tanie Kitabayashi) in one of the airplane workers in Porco Rosso, and the old hermit of Princess Mononoke), My Neighbor Totoro on its own is one of the most accomplished and important children’s films ever made. 86 minutes
THE DVD
Image B+ Sound B Extras C by Bill Chambers Next to Fox’s muddy pan-and-scan DVD release from 2002, Disney’s 2-disc set of My Neighbor Totoro is a revelation, but still it leaves room for improvement. For starters, the source print’s abundant grain falls victim to edge-enhancement, resulting in something rather like screen-door artifacting. Colours are under the constant threat of oversaturation, and owners of 16×9 displays without overscan will lose precious real estate to the windowboxing of this 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation. If pressed, I’d have to say that this is the worst-looking Ghibli/Disney transfer since Castle in the Sky, though it’s nonetheless the best thing to happen to My Neighbour Totoro on these shores in a long, long time.A new English dub in Dolby 2.0 stereo joins the original Japanese audio, also in Dolby 2.0 stereo; the English track sounds technically superior (i.e., less brittle), but given my steadily weakening tolerance for Dakota Fanning, I only sampled it. This, of course, didn’t let me off the hook, as Fanning and her diminutive sister Elle dominate the obligatory “Behind the Microphone” featurette (6 mins.), squeezing each other after every line-reading like twin Tamagotchis programmed for sisterly affection. The opening and ending title sequences sans text, a dupey-looking trailer for My Neighbor Totoro, and trailers for Disney’s other Ghibli DVDs, The Little Mermaid, Cars, Chicken Little, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Airbuddies round out the first platter. Disc 2 contains one of those inexplicable storyboard versions of the film (seriously, who watches these?), with the same language options as the feature proper. Originally published: March 21, 2006.
Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
***/****
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Betraying a new maturity in not only animation but also score, Kiki’s Delivery Service is a puberty fable whose conceit, if taken far enough, eventually suggests that the magic of childhood lost in adolescence can be regained through faith, courage, and love. Kiki, as tradition dictates, leaves home at the age of thirteen to find her fortune as “town witch” to a town without one. Her only learned skill that of flight, she begins the titular courier service while living with what appears to be an interracial couple in an island amalgamation of several western cities. With her black cat Jiji the only nod to any sort of Disney convention (he talks, but only to her and only when she’s magical, at that), the picture is marked by a delicious bittersweet quality as the story moves from parents losing a child to adolescence through to that child finding–and losing–first love in a strange city. Between this and My Neighbor Totoro, Miyazaki’s hallmarks emerge with a clear intentionality–he evolved into an auteur with a lovely fable cycle about overcoming the uncertainties of growing up in particular and life in general. Though not nearly so adept or consistently enthralling as My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service is a children’s film that gives lie, again, to the western belief that stories for kids need to be insipid, trite, and unwatchable. 103 minutes
THE DVD
Image A- Sound B+ Extras C+ by Bill Chambers A distaff Harry Potter substitute (and coincidentally hitting stores the same time as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets), Kiki’s Delivery Service arrives on DVD in a 2-disc set from Buena Vista that’s available individually or in a three-pack with Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky. The 1.82:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer–less severely windowboxed than Spirited Away‘s–is without significant flaws; colours are pure and vivid, and the line-work is free of halos and other artifacts. Although non-descriptly listed as a “Japanese” alternative to the “English Dolby Digital 5.1” option, the film’s original soundtrack is presented here in DD 5.1 as well. While both mixes are exquisitely detailed, each betrays the 1989 film’s age in a dearth of rear-channel imaging and LFE information. As a purist, I once again preferred to watch Kiki’s Delivery Service in Japanese (with English subtitles, natch)–the American dub sets quite a different tone for the picture by recasting Kiki’s effeminate cat Jiji with the voice of Phil Hartman, for example.Pixar’s John Lasseter provides a video introduction in which he tells us that Kiki’s Delivery Service is wonderful; though I love Lasseter’s work (Toy Story 2 throbs with genius), these intros reek of cultural arrogance, an Anglo personality validating Asian art. (If you’ve bought the DVD, isn’t he preaching to the converted?) Other extras on the first platter include a “Behind the Microphone” segment (5 mins.) showing a ‘tween-aged Dunst (whose nickname, Kiki, may have started with this gig), the late Hartman, Matthew Lawrence, and Janeane Garofalo in the recording booth, plus a 10-minute block of Japanese trailers for Kiki’s Delivery Service. Seven in all, the very last of these previews is a series of camera moves around an intricate mural. The second disc contains a version of Kiki’s Delivery Service reminiscent of the “Work in Progress” Beauty and the Beast, as it’s the entire film in sequential storyboard form; a better keepsake than a viewing experience, it plays with the finished soundtrack in Japanese or English. Originally published: April 12, 2003.
Porco Rosso (1992)
**½/****
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The only misstep in Miyazaki’s later career (and a minor one at that), Porco Rosso tells the peculiar allegory of a WWI-era Italian pilot’s rejection of fascism in his native land and subsequent curse to live his life as an upright talking pig. The Crimson Pig, in fact (an obvious take on Germany’s Red Baron), fighting for good against evil air pirates in a souped-up bi-plane. His former partner and coy love interest is the benevolent Mata Hari Gina, who runs a pilot’s club in a sun-baked inlet. With animation that is simply astonishing in its detail (the highlight coming in an early scene as Porco moves a small table closer to him, jostling a radio and a bottle of wine), Porco Rosso marks both strides in technical achievement and Miyazaki’s latent politicism swimming to the surface. Where his previous two films were invested in personal tales of little girls finding their way in the world, this picture announces (somewhat obliquely and clumsily) the return to the auteur’s stumbling proselytizing (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds). Though Princess Mononoke deals with green philosophy and Spirited Away can be read as an allegory of child prostitution in Asia, the images of noble pigs and pre-bellum fascism are too broad and obvious to be taken without a certain cynicism. 94 minutes
THE DVD
Image A- Sound A- Extras B by Bill Chambers For 2-disc sets, Disney’s Studio Ghibli DVDs are rather sparsely supplemented–particularly those belonging to the current wave, which includes Hayao Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind as well as Hiroyuki Morita’s not-bad The Cat Returns. But the THX-certified A/V presentations of the two Miyazakis are top-notch, while it frankly comes as a relief that the studio has dispensed with John Lasseter’s paternalistic video introductions for the abovementioned titles, whether or not Pixar’s impending divorce from the studio is the true reason for their absence. Transferred at 1.82:1 and enhanced for 16×9 displays, the bright, colourful Porco Rosso has a very natural appearance in this incarnation, not like we’re looking at original cels but as though we’re seeing a freshly-minted 35mm print. Though there are minor traces of edge-enhancement, none of it really detracts from the impeccable line-work by Miyazaki and crew. The Japanese, French, and English dubs have each been configured for 5.1 Dolby Digital playback (most sites list 2.0, for reasons unknown), and although the audio doesn’t take full advantage of the discrete soundstage, it’s sufficiently dynamic, with the rear channels really coming into play during the climactic dogfight.It’s easy to see why Miyazaki himself loves the French track, featuring Jean Reno as the voice of Porco Rosso (for a sneak preview of his wonderful performance, see the moment in Léon where Reno dons a pig-faced oven mitt), but in the interest of full disclosure, I sat through only the Japanese version in its entirety. While I realize the argument for sticking with the English dub is that subtitles divert one’s attention from the visuals, American Porco Michael Keaton sounds enough like Garfield to prove at least as distracting as the yellow subs–which are of course a much more faithful translation of the Japanese dialogue. Rounding out the first platter: “Behind the Microphone” (7 mins.), an EPK-style piece on the preparation of Porco Rosso for U.S. audiences; a 3-minute, subtitled interview with Tashio Suzuka from 1992 in which the Ghibli producer confirms suspicions that Porco Rosso wasn’t intended for children; an 8-minute block of original Japanese trailers and TV spots for Porco Rosso, four in all; THX Optimode tests; and previews for the Bambi Platinum Edition, the Studio Ghibli trio, and The Incredibles. On the second disc, find Porco Rosso in sequential storyboard form, again with your choice of English, French, or Japanese soundtracks. Originally published: March 1, 2005.
Princess Mononoke (1997)
****/****
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An endless delight, Princess Mononoke is a film as beautiful as it is poignant. Prince Ashitaka is cursed to death when his arm is infected by a strange pestilence from the deep forest. Journeying on a final quest out of his homeland with a steel musket ball his only clue, Ashitaka traces the source of his contagion’s fury to an industrialized city-state run by the Lady Eboshi, steadily encroaching on the pristine forest. Princess Mononoke respects character ambiguity and nuance, reminding a great deal of Inagaki’s Miyamoto Musashi Samurai trilogy in that regard. Though she’s a spoiler, for instance, Lady Eboshi is the protector of literal and social lepers–diseased men working alongside “fallen” women. The titular feral child and her retinue of ancient wolf gods form the final third of the picture’s central trio: she the wild, Eboshi the civilized, and Ashitaka the (doomed) bridge between the two. That Princess Mononoke is an Industrial Revolution allegory is inescapable (the images of marauding boars cutting through the forest remind of Faulkner’s description of “The Bear” and, as it follows, of the locomotive’s role in Britain), but it’s also a wonderful fantasy, a bracing action movie, and an animation of uncommon beauty and detail. Princess Mononoke is the first film that successfully marries Miyazaki’s politics with his humanism, and it’s a masterpiece. 133 minutes
Spirited Away (2001)
****/****
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An extraordinary film blessed with a wealth of critical possibilities, Spirited Away places high among the most beautiful animated films ever made. It is a culmination of Miyazaki’s auteur motifs (displaced children, surrogate parents, magical modes of transportation, the freedom of flight, etc.), which are at ease now with the filmmaker’s political inclinations–comfortably buried in the subtext, all. It’s another marriage of tradition with the modern sensibility, another meditation on the encroaching of civilization on the natural, and. at its most basic level, another brilliant fable about dealing with the pitfalls of growing up, though a strong case could be made for Spirited Away as a discussion of the evils of bathhouses and their link to prostitution (young girls at the beck of beasts), the film at its heart is a thing of bracing genius. En route to her new home, young Chihiro (soon ritually rechristened Sen) is separated from her gluttonous parents (more pigs and their appetites, à la Porco Rosso) and forced to work in a bathhouse frequented nightly by Japan’s pantheon of house and nature spirits; Spirited Away is an adventure, a thriller, a comedy, and a romance at once and both political and personal, but at its heart and most importantly, it concerns a little girl honouring her friends and her family by learning to value herself. 125 minutes
THE BLU-RAY DISC
Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B+ by Bill Chambers Buena Vista’s region-free Blu-ray release of the Academy Award-winning Spirited Away surpasses expectations, looking as good as the best animated titles from Disney. The 1.85:1,1080p image is sparklingly clean and, given the supernatural absence of grain, surprisingly tactile, bringing into relief a range of background textures–skies have a coarse but not uninviting appearance, as if painted on watercolour paper (entirely possible)–that SD flattened out. Colours are impossibly rich; there’s a specific shade of blue Miyazaki uses for the firmament that’s rendered turquoise on DVD but here gains richness and complexity–no longer does a tornado always seem to be looming on the horizon. Dynamic range is outstanding. Both the English-dub and preferred original Japanese soundtracks are included in 5.1 DTS-HD MA, and this upgrade to lossless audio is immediately apparent in the renewed expansiveness of the mix, not to mention depth. The stink spirit set-piece has never been more viscerally engrossing.Bonus material gets ported over from the DVD intact–the only difference is that it’s now consolidated onto a single dual-layer platter with the feature film. An optional introduction from John Lasseter sees the Pixar/Disney figurehead calling Spirited Away his favourite of Miyazaki’s films. Meanwhile, the Disney-centric “The Art of Spirited Away” (15 mins., SD) features glimpses of the scripting and recording sessions for the Anglo version (if I were co-screenwriter Cindy Hewitt, I would not have made the embarrassing admission that she and others thought the sought-after “seal” in the picture referred to an animal rather than a stamp), Disney executives extolling the virtues of Spirited Away‘s “good values,” and Miyazaki–whose voice is supplanted by an English-speaking soundalike–briefly touching on the inspirations for select characters. Surprisingly, a shot of Miyazaki smoking went uncensored.
“Behind the Microphone” (6 mins., SD) is a puff piece hosted by sitcom vet Jason Marsden (the voice of Haku in the U.S. Spirited Away) that takes a closer and more self-congratulatory look at the ADR work of Marsden, Pleshette, Daveigh Chase (the erstwhile Lilo and The Ring‘s Samara), Susan Egan, and Disney “good-luck charms” John Ratzenberger and David Ogden Stiers. Next find “Select Storyboard-to-Screen Comparisons,” a dual-angle feature wherein you can toggle between key art drawn by and large by Miyazaki himself and the finished animation for eleven minutes’ worth of scenes.
The highlight of the package is the anonymously-named “Nippon Television Special” (SD), forty-two precious minutes inside cozy Studio Ghibli during crunch time as Miyazaki and his multiplying staff rush to make an unrealistic release date. To a triumphant score and man-on-the-scene narration, Miyazaki (ever lamenting that “Japanese culture is doomed” due to the ignorance of his young charges, who seem to live in a historical vacuum) confers with his protégé Masashi Ando, cooks dinner for his crew, directs Eastern vocal talent (as with the Stateside release, the actors performed to completed footage), eats KFC and smokes like a chimney, and bathes in the beauty of Spirited Away‘s theme song, Youmi Kimura’s “Always with Me.” (Kimura’s own story of how she became part of the Ghibli family is motivational.) It’s also the sole making-of in the entire package to forgo any mention of Disney. A trailer for the upcoming Aladdin BD cues up on startup while a 28-minute (!) block of Japanese trailers and TV spots for Spirited Away (22 in total and, where the theatrical previews are concerned, upgraded to HD) rounds out the disc, which comes bundled with a DVD copy of the film. Disney has concurrently reissued Ghibli’s The Cat Returns on Blu-ray.
Originally published: September 20, 2002.
